Excitement for season 2021 is somewhere around here, I'm sure, but I seem to have misplaced it, no it's not lost, I just don't know where it is

At last, after several months of the pandemic lockdown crushing local sport; then several more months of not much action anywhere, which may have been part of the lockdown, I don't know, because the back-end of 2020 went by in a big couch potato blur; followed then by a good couple of months of actual pre-season action, which included several games at Lakeside behind closed doors, a game in regional Victoria, a handful of games reputedly in metropolitan Melbourne but which may as well have been in regional Victoria, and another otherwise accessible to me game called off for the recent lockdown; after all that, I finally got to a South game.

And then, as per my custom during pre-season, I proceeded to pay as little attention as possible to the game being played in front of me, reminiscing instead about junk food and the kickboxer Dennis Alexio.

And that's fine. Those of us who attend pre-season games have our own motivations for doing so. Some enjoy the proximity to South; some enjoy attempting to play the optimistic or pessimistic prognosticator; some people are there to scout the opposition. I'm there to socialise and overhear conversations that I can leverage for content for this blog.

Having said all of that, what did I learn from the experience? In terms of the on-field stuff, almost nothing. The team that South fielded today had a large number of youth team players, likely bench options, and a handful of people who will start games, and some who may have started in the recent past but who are not guaranteed to do so in 2021. 

Our backup goalkeeper option James Burgess should be a step up from the back-up options we've had in the past few years, but in terms of everyone else that played today, I did not see anything to make me think that they would be the key to an improved overall performance from the senior men's team. Having said that, my pre-season ratings of South players and performances on a scale of 1 to 10 - where 1 is bad, and 10 is good - tend to be begin at -5, and move very little from there.

St Albans (no idea of the relative strength of their lineup) were the better team - in a game that I want to say was messy, but was it really? When's the last time I actually watched a match to remember what a good or bad one looked like? - and probably should've ended up scoring one or two more than the one goal they did. My estimation of what St Albans should have scored is based on them creating about six or seven really good chances, with a competent forward line scoring from between one-in-three or one- in-four of that quality of opportunity.

Maybe 1.5-2.5 goals would've about right.

As for South, we had one loopy long range shot which the opposition keeper tipped over, and a moderate flurry within the last five minutes. The rest was, as alluded to elsewhere, very meh. Nothing to get worked up about either way, yet. Soon enough though, we can all claim the club is dead.

Next game - possible venue change, check your local guides

This week's first game of the season is against Heidelberg. This is a game that is scheduled to be played at Olympic Village on Sunday. However, the ongoing renovation of Olympic Village is not complete, and there is strong talk that the game will not be played at that ground.

(there is even some discussion, based on what exactly I don't know, that the Olympic Village stand itself has actually been condemned, but that's neither here nor there for the purposes of whatever happens this week, assuming that rumour even has any basis in fact)

Just where exactly the game will be played - assuming that the game goes ahead at all, and is not instead postponed - is something that is yet to be determined.

Reversing the fixture so that we host it at Lakeside is not an option, as the Victorian Track and Field Championships are being held at Lakeside from Friday until Sunday. My understanding from hearing chat today at Churchill Reserve is that John Cain Memorial Park is also not ready to host games just yet. I suppose Heidelberg could ring around the rest of the NPL's Greek teams and find out if Port or Kingston Heath or Jack Edwards are available.

For the time being, I would say keep an ear out for whatever change may happen for this game, because things could change at quite short notice

Everything has been going on for too long, but let's keep going anyway

The other week South Melbourne's Facebook page put up a "Happy Valentijn's Day" gimmick post, making allusion to Dutchman Jasper Valentijn who played with us during the 2007 pre-season and Hellenic Cup. In order for that post to happen, the club's social media person needed a photo of Jasper, and they thought that I might have a photo of him. Well, I didn't, though I know one existed, and not the one where he's naked in a locker room with teammates from one of his clubs in Europe, but an actual photo of Jasper in a South top.

I could not for the life of me find a photo on the net, until I remembered something I heard on a segment of an Australian soccer history podcast - yes, a podcast that I co-host, and the relevant segment of which I led the discussion of. Thus I went scurrying through the Wayback Machine, and managed to find a photo of Jasper Valentijn during his brief time at South, and thus the post went up to general indifference. Not every attempt at engaging social media users is going to be a homerun, and that's fine.

Of course, the most dedicated of South of the Border's readership will recall that this blog already did the Valentijn's Day gimmick eleven years earlier (and did it with slightly more narrative effort), which is not to accuse anyone of being derivative; only to acknowledge that (with the appropriate amount of horror that I have wasted my life) that I have been posting on this blog for a very long time. Kudos to those readers who were there at the beginning and stuck around, and kudos to those who came later and foolishly decided to start reading this nonsense from the beginning, when it was legitimately awful.

Oh, and when there so much of that awfulness.

Anyway, I found the relevant photo on this archived page, and instantly aged about ten years. Fourteen years ago. There wasn't even a South of the Border then. It's ten years since we signed Trent Waterson for a second time, and seeing Frank Drakopoulos trying to punch-on with half of Cobram Victory when he was playing for Clifton Hill in a Dockerty Cup match. Nine years since Dino Djulbic made his Socceroos debut. About seven and a half years since Fernando played his last game for us. About six years since I saw Andy Bourakis playing at Western Suburbs, and six years since we played against Tansel Baser's Whittlesea United in the backblocks of Thomastown. Approaching five years since we won anything. Fourteen years since the first - but not the last - attempt by South to get a spot in the A-League.

One can opine endlessly about what has and has not changed over the past decade and a half, but it's best to do that only intermittently, otherwise you forget that you're also living in the here and now; regardless of how much supporting an antique club like South under the current circumstances sees you be treated like a museum piece yourself. Every club is to some degree or other a personification of its supporters, and vice-versa, but damn it if supporting South for the past decade and a half hasn't made the club indistinguishable from each other in the same way that after a certain amount of time a dog owner begins to resemble his pooch.

On a personal front, last year was going to bring some changes anyway, and then the pandemic happened; and as with every major crisis that arrives, NOTHING WAS EVER THE SAME AGAIN and yet somehow also managed to stay pretty much the same. It is not out of the realms of possibility that we will have yet more lockdowns, delays, and rescheduled matches, alongside the restrictions that will be a part of our soccer lives for at least the immediate future

The blog certainly lost its edge and enthusiasm over the past couple of years, only some of that due to 2020's lack of things to write about. I got tired, and while I like to think I can bounce back and recapture some of the enthusiasm and quality of the blog's peak, why promise something that I might not be able to commit to?

In the NSL days, I was distant from South in a lot of ways, with the most important of them out of my control. I tried to make up for that in the post-NSL era, and have largely succeeded, perhaps going too far the other way. Is it any wonder I've got to the stage where I've felt there's no water left in the well to draw upon? Supporting South is exhausting work, and doing it the way I do it - trying to find ways to write about occasional and restricted glory mixed in with interminable periods of mediocrity - just makes things worse.

And yet here I am, still going for probably not very sound reasons such as a misguided and misplaced sense of loyalty, or contributing to the historical record, maybe even the kind of the pathetic hubristic guilt that comes from wanting to leave behind something of one's existence for future generations which will have bigger things to worry about than what some geek thought of overpaid park footballers (whom he was helping to overpay, in his own marginal way). Which is another way of saying that I can't wait for the season to start.

And if you're wondering what Jasper Valentijn is up to these days, I think he's the manager of a padel club in Groningen.

 If Ian Syson can buy one, so can you

A reminder that memberships for season 2021 are available, including now via the official website! If you were a paid up member in 2020, you also have the option of renewing for the cheaper rate of $50.

Annual General Meetings on Wednesday

Also a reminder that the 2020 South Melbourne Hellas and South Melbourne FC AGMS are on this Wednesday evening at 7:00 and 8:00 respectively, in the social club. 

South Melbourne Facebook pages taken down, and then restored

I'm sure that readers have been aware of the Facebook vs Australia situation, and the ways in which Facebook's blocking of Australian news pages has taken out a lot eof non-news pages as well. One of the victims of Facebook's brinkmanship with the Australian government (and the traditional media outlets that the government is acting on behalf of), was the South Melbourne FC Facebook page. 

And then it was back-up, eventually, and we could learn all about which player's birthday it was again.

While it's easy to scoff at the temporary loss (especially by those who are banned from posting comments on there), the sad truth is that for many people out there, Facebook is the internet. For someone like me who despises Facebook for all sorts of reasons, and uses it only to keep in nominal touch with otherwise estranged relations, and for Australian soccer history guff, I could care less about Facebook's reckless implementation of banning news sites or the .

I mean, I still actually pay a subscription to a major daily newspaper, as well subscribe to other community broadcasters. I'm still a member of online forums (remember them?), and not just soccer ones! But the reality is that for many other people, if it's not Facebook, it may as well not exist. Not only are most community based organisations of a certain size not going to bother with updating a website (f they can even find someone to do it, or if the person who had the password hasn't pissed off from the club) - but a lot of people these days just don't visit websites that aren't information portals of some kind, as opposed to being an original source of information.

Which, to sum up, is a situation that sucks, because I really hate Facebook, but we're all trapped in it to some degree, even those of us who want nothing to do with it.

Public transport guide updates

Since every team due to compete in NPL Victoria in 2021 is the same as in 2020, I've not bothered to go back and update the blog's public transport guide. I assume pretty much everything has stayed the same, except for maybe some increased services in some areas.

A word on this week's game away to the Bergers though, assuming it goes ahead - if you're coming from the Sunbury line, there will be train replacement bus services, so plan your journey accordingly.

Accredited, once again

For season 2021, your main correspondent on South of the Border has once been granted media accreditation by Football Victoria. So, take that opposition NPL clubs, I'm getting in for free again. Who knows how my schedule will work out in terms of being able to get non-South games this year, but I'll do my best to get "around the grounds" where I can, even if it's the least loved segment of any given week's report.

Write for South of the Border

As usual, I'm always looking for guest contributors to South of the Border, for both regular and occasional segments. Especially keen for someone to do match reports for South's NPL women's games, but whatever South related topic or slant you have in mind, just send me a pitch and I'll consider it.

If You Know Your History has returned for 2021

The Australian soccer history radio show and podcast I host with Ian Syson on FNR has returned for 2021. It's going to air at the moment on Thursdays at 6:00pm, via Facebook, Twitter and Twitch, and available later as a podcast via a number of sources. I've been a bit slack with updating the show's blog page, but that's partly because my cheap earphones had started to cark it, and lockdown had made it difficult to get a new pair at short notice. And then it turned out that one of my brothers had two spare pairs, and now my only excuse for not updating the blog is laziness.

Friendly tomorrow against St Albans

 At Churchill Reserve in St Albans, kickoff 1:00PM. Final warm-up match before the season starts.

Well then...

.. I assume tomorrow's scheduled friendly will not be proceeding tomorrow. A pity.

Friendly on Saturday against Brunswick City

Our next friendly is on Saturday evening against Brunswick City, at Dunstan Reserve in West Brunswick at 6:30.

Could this be the first South game I attend since March 2020? I think it could well be.

The shorter, the sweeter

Some tiny bits of news.

Last night South beat the Knights 1-0 in a closed doors session at Lakeside.

The AGMs have been announced for Wednesday 24th February in the social club, at 7PM (SMH) and 8PM (SMFC).

Every now and again I get to add another match program scan to my collection. Here's Nrothern Spirit away from 2003-2004. Thanks to Mark Boric, Greg Stock, and Geoff Coy for teaming up to get us another one from the late NSL era, where things tended to get a bit more iffy on the program front.

Fred, Fredd, and Freddy

Just when it seemed that the 2021 senior men's squad was settled, the club pops up with a surprise signing an "excitement machine" named Freddie Sey.

Apart from his pro forma remarks about being glad to be playing for South, his introductory video offers only fleeting, and sometimes grainy, clues to the kind of the player Sey is. He's an attacking player, that much is clear, looking to take shoots and take on players. Clearly Sey likes to dribble, though I suspect his ambition outweighs his proficiency on that front. He's also probably the type of dribbler who likes to kick and chase, burning his direct opponent with pure speed. That might not work so well in this league and especially some of its smaller grounds, but it worked for Andy Brennan for enough weeks in 2015 to get Brennan an A-League contract, so it might now work for Sey in 2021.

As for everything else about Sey, South fans were left scrounging. A New South Wales 'African Cup of Nations' appearance in 2020 was easy enough to find. But did he actually play for any clubs? His public Facebook profile offers little in the way of soccer content. Friend of the blog Paul Hunt noted that Sey has gone under the name Freddy Ankumah-Sey, which helps us to track him to NSW NPL2 side North Shore Mariners, where Sey played at in 2017 and 2018.

That led to a prompt from another reader, suggesting one search for Frederick Ankumah-Sey. That reveals a few more results, mainly that Sey played for Rydalmere Lions and Bonnyrigg White Eagles in 2019. Assuming that all these names are the same person of course!

No one wants to harshly judge a player they've never seen, let alone never heard of. But one does automatically wonder about a left-field signing like this.

Friendly at Casey Comets

Tomorrow night, the senior men and the 20s are playing pre-season friendlies against Casey Comets, out at Comets Stadium. The 21s start at 6:00pm, and the Seniors at 8:00pm.

As the game is not at Lakeside, the game is open for people to attend, though I won't be there myself - a three hour public transport trip doesn't quite seem worth the bother. Yes, I have gone soft.

*opens newspaper* hmm, let's see what's in the news today

The online response to the club's release of the 2021 membership packages seems to have been pretty muted. Maybe it's because people have stopped caring, or maybe because the club did the right thing (whatever their motivation for doing so) by offering the renewal discount to 2020 members, there's nothing to complain about. And when people aren't complaining, there's fewer clicks, less rage posting, and less overall engagement. Maybe the club should've actually charged the full rate to everyone, getting those social media metrics up?

(Also, where is the link to the membership portal on the front page of the club's website? And are members still going to be charged for entry to home FFA Cup matches?)

Anyway, memberships are for real games with with real meaning, unlike the past two pre-season friendlies, which mean nothing. These two recent friendlies, both played behind closed doors at lakeside, were a 2-1 win over Northcote, with what looked like a pretty soft goal to concede; and a 3-2 win over Avondale, which I hope people won't latch on to as proof of anything, especially competency. 

Not that I think that there's actually much chance of people getting carried away, because I wasn't there and neither were you. So what can we say? Nothing, that's what, except that maybe Marcus Schroen looked thin or trim or skinny or what have you on one of those recent videos the club posted. Maybe I've forgotten what he looks like in person, and while it's not like he was ever the chonky type, maybe a proper pre-season instead of galivanting about the Spice Islands has done him some good.

Much of the rest of the week's focus (online at least) seems to be on the continually degrading state of the Ferenc Puskas statue out the back of Gosch's Paddock. In a recent-ish I noted the reaction to what appeared to be the then vandalism or theft of the plaque on the plinth. Now whether because of more vandalism, or shoddy craftsmanship, the plinth has degraded further, and the calls by South fans (and some others) to repair the statue and move it to Lakeside have been re-doubled.

Most of this anger comes from a good place. The statue is of a South legend, and the statue is in a poor location and in an increasingly poor condition. And after all the effort involved in getting the statue project up in the first place, I don't think that anyone would be happy with the outcome four years on, not just because of the money spent, but also because it's supposed to be honouring a legend of world football, and someone the statue's funders apparently hold in high esteem.

Moving the statue to Lakeside (apparently there's plans to at least try to make that happen now) would probably solve at least some of those problems: namely, the more prominent location, being closer to the club he was closest to while he was here, and you'd like to think also a reduction in the chance of vandalism. Repairing the statue and moving it to Lakeside (hopefully at someone other than the club's expense) won't solve the aesthetic problem of it being a lousy looking statue, or of its design bearing little connection to what Puskas looked like while he was here, but the perfect being the enemy of the good, you'd rather an imperfect solution rather than the situation that exists now. That, and it would be funny to have a statue conceived of and funded in part by a prominent former sponsor long since associated with the A-League, to have visit Lakeside and South Melbourne in order to get close to his attempted homage to one of his heroes

2021 memberships now available

The low-key build-up to the 2021 season just kicked up a notch, with the release of the 2021 membership packages.

It's pretty much the same deal as last year, with the notable exception of a $50 renewal option for 2020 financial members.

This is a very sensible decision by the board, even if though the club will take a financial hit from it. It's certainly a good outcome for paid up 2020 members. More importantly, it's an obvious gesture of goodwill to the members from the club, as well as a practical demonstration - hopefully the first of many - that this board does not take South supporters for granted.

At the members forum last month, the cost of membership dues for 2020 members in 2021 was discussed, and the idea thrown up from the floor that the membership for renewing members should be capped at $50, the same as an active life member. The board's representatives on the day weren't exactly thrilled with the idea, but it was a constructive suggestion without malice - and I hope that the fact the suggestion was constructive, and not belligerent, was part of what got this idea over the line.

There'll be people out there who were paid up members in 2020, who will be happy to treat their 2020 dues as a donation, and once again pay the full-rate again this year.  But while it's beyond cliché to reiterate these things, it is true that the club itself is not the only thing that's taken a financial hit from the pandemic. 

Farewell the grand inconvenience, at least for this year

So it the Australian Grand Prix has been postponed until the end of the year. 

Usually that event is an incredible pain in the arse for South Melbourne, as it messes with a ton of operational matters.

Fixturing is the most obvious grand prix related issue that most fans will have to deal with. Apart from relatively minor inconveniences like diminished parking access, the assembly of the grand prix's infrastructure usually means that the area around Lakeside Stadium is out of bounds for several weeks. 

That often means no more than one home fixture within the opening seven or eight weeks when the weather is still warm, neither the state leagues or juniors nor the AFL have started their seasons, and before people have become even more jaded than they usually are about all things South.

It also means that all those home games that we didn't get early in the season get piled up in winter, taking a toll on fans and the playing surface. On top of that, our senior teams are forced to scour Melbourne looking for grounds to train on.

So now that we're not going to have a March grand prix, will we get some positives out of this? I guess we should be able to avoid training away from Lakeside and our grounds down near pit lane. But will we be able to somehow score an extra home game within the first six weeks?

2021's fixture isn't the worst when it comes to the grand prix impacting our early season, perhaps because of the later start to the coming season. Still, I think it's worth taking a shot at getting one fixture reversed, that being the round 4 game away to Port Melbourne. 

Considering the fixture, it'd be worth at least asking the question. Unlike the rest of our stretch of winter home games, our scheduled home game against Port in the middle of the season is not a part of double-header with a senior women's game.

You'd like to think we'd get at least some boost in membership and attendance, and it would ease the burden on the Lakeside surface during the winter months. Well, maybe not, but it'd still be nice to have to play the usual streak of early season away games when the main reason for that annual extended road-trip no longer exists.

Believe me, this is not a complaint, I'm just trying to make a serious but elusive point

So last Saturday South had a friendly against Green Gully. It was at Lakeside, so it was behind closed doors (such is life), we lost 1-0 (the score-line really doesn't matter), and the world moved on. 

On the socials after the game there was an unsurprising interview with one of the youth team players who got a run. Again, no complaint from me, because these interviews are not meant to be particularly interesting or illuminating.

We got some sort of quick highlights package from a camera-angle reminiscent of one of those novelty video game angles that no one in their right mind ever uses. Once more, I expect no different, because why would there be a multi-camera set-up for a pre-season game of no importance?

Still, it is hard not to feel emotionally distant from the club at the moment. The members forum late last year and the couple of games in the eastern suburbs aside, everything's been closed doors and just... distant. I can't really find another word for it at the moment.

Memberships for 2021 aren't out yet, but they will be here soon enough, and so too will the season proper. We'll get our first home game in round 2, and then be away for a month. You'd like to think that those who are there most weeks will find themselves back at South games, but will they actually?

There's the beginnings here of an outline of a post I'd like to write, about the nature of conditional support, and the limits of "<insert team> until I die". In the past I'd probably have already written it, because I'd have felt it necessary to do so. I'd have felt that it was a pressing and worthwhile matter to discuss.

Now I'm less jaded (which for me sometimes worked as a motivating factor) and more tired. By life, sure, but also by the lack of South Melbourne action, but also by the lack of proximity to the culture. And to get to the point, how many people still care?

I mean, that's a question we've asked a lot over the past 13 years of this blog, so forgiveness please for retreading old ground. But the post-Taylor seasons were a drain and the pandemic enforced break, rather than allowing people to recharge, might it act as a disincentive to come back to South?

We know that the rest of Australian soccer hasn't missed us, and neither have most of the supporters we used to have. But what if during this time off, a good chunk of the South fans we still have, spent 2020 not missing South, to the extent that they don't think about coming back?

Everything about South (its own media, online fan activity) seems so mellow, so withdrawn, that it doesn't feel like we're building toward anything. I get that there's a lot of players we haven't grown to love or loathe yet, and that's a part of the problem. I get that everyone's a bit cautious about over-selling what soccer will be like, and whether we'll have a truly competitive team.

Oh, and there's the National Second Division stuff which, even if it too isn't getting people particularly fired up, still looks more appealing to most people than another season of trudging around the industrial backblocks 

I guess what I'm trying to say is, once South starts again for real in late February, will it matter to the people who still cared?

It's not meant to sound alarmist. There's just been this incredible void with anything to do with South, and who knows what we'll see on the other side of it. It's not the first time we've had to deal with such an absence and degree of inaction. And unlike the previous we (as far as I know) haven't come close to carking it, but I guess there's at east a hint of the same quality of the unknown. 

It's not a matter of an ordinary off-season, take some time off, and welcome back. It's been so much time away that it's more than enough to break the habit of caring about South.

I guess I just want to get back to a game to see for myself if it still seems to mean what it's always meant; that there's still enough people who feel excitement, and angst, and camaraderie to keep this thing continuing as a viable cultural (and not just business) concern.

Friendly vs Kingston tonight

As per the club's notice, our senior men will be playing a friendly tonight against Kingston, at The Grange Reserve, 7pm kickoff.

Friendly this Saturday vs Goulburn Valley Suns

Great news everyone, finally some open doors, South Melbourne pre-season friendly action. The catch though, is that you'll have to be in Shepparton by 11:00AM.

So, um, yeah, that's me out. 

But if you're really keen, as part of its week in Shepparton, South Melbourne is playing Goulburn Valley Suns at the Shepparton Sports Precinct at 11:00 this Saturday.

Remembering Tommy Docherty, someone I don't remember

Former South Melbourne Hellas coach Tommy Docherty died on the last day of 2020, and while I don't usually do any sort of deep-dives (or even shallow dives) on the passing of former South people, Docherty's tenure at South has always intrigued me, as does that time in South's history.

I mean, even putting aside the decline of our collective Hellas and general soccer memory, that whole late 1970s and especially early 1980s period - at least the bit prior to Len McKendry turning up and sorting things out - seems to be glossed over by our supporters.

And that's understandable. because unlike our dominant 1970s state league performances, South's first few years in the NSL were hardly a runway success. After all, we did finish last in 1979, and only avoided relegation because of a certain degree of administrative shiftiness, for which Sydney Olympic has never forgiven us.

That loss of collective memory isn't helped by the acute lack of footage from those early NSL years, but that doesn't completely explain why that South era doesn't get remembered as well as other similarly unsuccessful eras. It's not helped either by 95% of our supporter base (give or take one or two percentage points) disappearing into the aether.  

Oh, sure, there are moments and players from that era that people like to bring up, like Malcolm 'Supermac' Macdonald's guest stint, and the extended presence up front of former Liverpool star Alun Evans. 

But in general it seems to have been a period of time when the club chased a lot of big name players, paid very big transfer fees, and got little reward for these endeavours. When that approach failed, the club continued to repeat the same process while wondering why the team wasn't improving. Stop me if you've heard this story before.

That's certainly a simplistic retelling from someone who wasn't even alive then. Nevertheless, from what I can tell, the signing of Tommy Docherty as South coach midway through 1982 was typical of the club's thinking at the time. Instead of pausing and perhaps trying to figure out the root problem, the committee would invariably try and throw more cash at the problem in the hope that money alone would solve the club's unbefitting lack of success.

Enter Tommy Docherty. The Scotsman was a former player of some accomplishment, and had coached a variety of teams in England, most notably Manchester United - whom he had gotten relegated, then promoted; then won the FA Cup with them in 1977, upsetting Liverpool; and then found himself sacked soon after, when his affair with the wife of United's physiotherapist came to light. 

After a couple of short stints at Derby County and Queens Park Rangers, Docherty coached Sydney Olympic in 1981, though he soon returned to the UK to help his former club Preston North End - for whom he had played over 300 games - get out of a relegation scrap. For whatever reason Docherty's coaching stint at Deepdale didn't last, and so he hit the road again looking for new opportunities. 

And that's how he ended up back in Australia. Docherty was in the country in May of 1982 to promote a soccer skills program or some such over a five week period. During this time, South approached him to take over the club for those five weeks in his spare time, with an option to coach out the rest of the year. 

Despite big spending on numerous "name" players, under incumbent coach John Margaritis, South had played disjointed, inconsistent football, was apparently suffering from poor player morale, and was entrenched in the bottom half of the table midway through the season.

Docherty took over the coaching reigns from round 14 onward, with Margaritis stepping aside from the position of head coach while remaining within the coaching structure; that was an arrangement that would last little more than a few hours, with Margaritis quitting soon after introducing the players to their new coach. 

It's a little bit odd to think that a well-credentialed senior coach like Margaritis would agree to such an arrangement in the first place, and sure enough the man himself must have realised quite quickly that it made no sense. Certainly several pundits at the time, including Rale Rasic (who in just a few months' time  would succeed Docherty as South coach), agreed with the unusualness of the affair.

With training at the time only three days a week, Docherty was able to live large to a certain degree, supplementing his soccer income with radio and television appearances, and one also assumes his regular newspaper columns. One report from The Guardian in 2000 suggests he was making more in Australia from his combined coaching and pundit work than he would've made as a manager at a top English club at the time.

Being an affable and gregarious walking quote-machine, Docherty was good for publicity, but it's arguable that he was much good for South on field. Some players, like Charlie Egan, seemed to relish his fellow Scots' style, but other veteran players soon found themselves on the transfer list. And it's not like the team's results improved all that much, although Docherty's preference for attacking football at least probably made things more interesting.

After five weeks of mixed results, Docherty returned to England to take care of pressing legal and financial matters - namely the matter of a court summons over maintenance arrears due to his first wife, Agnes. During that time, Mick Watson acted as caretaker coach. On his return, Docherty coached out the rest of the season, made tentative plans for 1983, but his contract was either not extended or was bought out by Olympic.

And it's his second stint at Olympic which is perhaps his most notable legacy in Australian soccer, as some of their fans tend to give him the credit for building the squad that would go on be a regular competitor for titles in the 1980s. 

As for South, even if we don't seem to remember his time here too much, he certainly remembered us. Interviewed on the eve of the South Melbourne vs Manchester United Club World Championship match, Docherty remembered his time at South as requiring more diplomacy in the changerooms than he was accustomed to; he also noted of South's fans that "they were the best winners in the world, and the worst losers"; and that when some supporters threw apples and oranges at him, Docherty would goad those fans by eating the apples and peeling the oranges.

Even a cursory look through the papers of the time (both the mainstream outlets and specialist soccer press like Soccer Action), reveal that Docherty loved football, and was happy to entertain the press and public. In the long-run, South probably would've been better off if he'd taken the job a bit more seriously; still, there's something to be said of his not taking the game and himself too seriously. After all, soccer is a game, and games are meant to be enjoyed, or so I'm told.

New year, new signings

A new year is here, and a little more progress has been made on the playing personnel front.

Two areas of concern seem to have been addressed with these signings, one being the back up goalkeeper situation, and the other, the desire for another forward.

The goalkeeper is one James Burgess, a 21 year old former South junior, who's been plying his trade Langwarrin and Springvale White Eagles. Insert some of joke about once a upon a time having a coach who would recruit from those places, or banish players to them.

I know nothing about Burgess apart from what comes out of the official press release, but one does wonder - surely a 21 year old isn't moving from (I assume) a starter's role lower down the leagues to sit on the bench here?

Burgess' arrival at Lakeside surely means that Josh Dorron's time is officially up, even if nothing is actually officially announced. He was on the fringiest of fringes in 2020, when he was "loaned" to some club lower down the food-chain, so it always seemed unlikely that he was going to get a game ahead of Clark and Nikola Roganovic last year. 

That it turned out that no one would play a game after March probably just made it even easier to let him go. But we'll always have the night that South plucked him from obscurity - that is, recruiting him because the football department actually saw him - and one of the worst chants ever performed by South fans that wasn't racist, homophobic, sexist, sweary, or offensive in some other way.

The other signing is a bit more pivotal. The player in question is one Henry Hore, another Queenslander making the move to what one Bananabender has referred to as the Queensland Development League - that is, NPL Victoria.

Again, I know very little about Hore, except that he was in a championship winning team up there last year, including being teammates with fellow South signing Marco Jankovic. Who knows if Hore can make it happen down in Melbounre, but you'd rather winners than losers, yes? Maybe.

Scrabbling around on the internet suggests that Hore is a forward/attacking midfielder, who apparently only weighs 67kgs. I don't know who's been weighing him and posting his details online, but if that weight class is true, it does seem a bit on the lean side.

Nevertheless, asking around social media for comments on Hore's quality, and the Queenslanders seemed universal in their praise and assessment. They say that Hore is a technically sound, versatile player, who can play across any of the attacking positions; tyat we can expect plenty of goals and assists; that he has a bag of tricks and a good deal of pace, and covers a lot of ground, and that he loves to play a 1-2.

All of which sounds very promising, but there's always a potential catch, and in this case it's one of South of the Border's all time favourites: if he's actually that good, why is he playing for us, in this competition? It's a valid question when you consider that Hore has played for Perth Glory in the National Youth League, and apparently "killed it" there, and that he was also apparently close to getting signed by Brisbane Roar as recently as last month.

It makes you wonder what those two teams know that no one else is telling us, especially Roar, who you assume would have been Hore from up close for the past couple of years. Is it because he's too little? Too old at 21? A-League scouts too dumb or cowardly, or merely distrustful of the standard of the NYL or NPL Queensland to take a punt on home grown talent right in front of their eyes?

Whatever the case may be, in time we will hopefully see plenty of Henry Hore, or at least enough to judge for ourselves whether his admirers were right in their assessments. 

We'll also see whether or not we got the right Hore, with Henry's older brother Mitch signing for Bentleigh. 

South senior men's squad as of 3/1/2021

• Luke Adams (played in pre-season friendly, and interviewed following one of those games)
• Zac Bates (played in pre-season friendly, and interviewed following one of those games))
• Daniel Clark (yes, back from Queensland)
• Pierce Clark ((yes, also back from Queensland)
• Ben Djiba (could yet become the right-sided fullback or winger of our NPL dreams)
• Lirim Elmazi (was wished a happy birthday, distinctive head spotted in other social media content)
• Chris Irwin
• Perry Lambropoulos (was wished a happy birthday)
• Mathew Loutrakis (interviewed post friendly)
• Jake Marshall (played in pre-season friendly
• Brad Norton (scored goal in pre-season friendly)
• Luke Pavlou (some sort of mention in a social media gimmick video or something)
• Harrison Sawyer (yes, also back from Queensland)
• Marcus Schroen (was interviewed in that video about South Melbourne;s new blind football team)
• Gerrie Sylaidos (scored goal in pre-season friendly, also easily recognisable thanks to trademark bandana)

Youth team players named as part of social media guff from a recent friendly played with a "youthful side", and/or, 20s players that might still be around next season:

• Sasha Murphy
• Yianni Panakos
• Esad Saglam
• Giorgi Zarbos (unclear if he will stay or seek greener senior football pastures)

In:

• James Burgess
• Henry Hore
• Marco Jankovic
• Josh Wallen

Neither here nor there as far as I can tell:

• Josh Meaker

Out:

• Melvin Becket
• Josh Dorron
• Stephen Folan (returned to Ireland in mid-2020)
• Amadu Koroma
• Nick Krousoratis
• Nikola Roganovic (retired, again)
• Peter Skapetis (Kingston City)

Expert Opinion: Three seconds of fame (previously unpublished)

A little gift to close out the year.

In February 2016, Melbourne Victory and Western Sydney Wanderers fans acted like twats at a game at Docklands, ripping out seats, and letting off flares and fire crackers and such. I was interviewed on the matter for ABC TV in my guise as a soccer academic, by their reporter Ben Lisson. Being my first television interview, I found the experience by turns exciting, nerve wracking, alienating, and bizarre. 

I wrote up a piece about the experience, but because it took me a little longer to finish than I otherwise would have liked, I didn't send it to my usual outlet of Shoot Farken, instead sending it to an irregularly produced magazine called Thin White Line; partly because I wanted something in print (even though they didn't have an ISBN), but also because I wanted to share the love around.

For whatever reason, the edition that the piece was meant to be published in never materialised. So here I am publishing it for the first time almost five years after I appeared on television. I don't think it's one of my better pieces by a long shot, but that's not the point,

Expert Opinion 
During an away game in Melbourne early in 2016, members of the Red and Black Bloc, the active supporter group for A-League franchise the Western Sydney Wanderers, lit a barrage of flares, as well as launched detonators which in the context of recent world events sounded not unlike the bombs let off in and around European football stadiums. Cue the expected reactions and outrage from all corners, including but not limited to: tabloid media hysteria; the pettiness of inter-codal rivalries; the self-flagellation of soccer fans; the rejection of any responsibility by members of active support groups; the obligatory conspiracy theories that ‘outsiders’ had caused the incident; and the eventual imposition of a fine and suspended point deduction penalty on the Wanderers themselves.

Now normally in these situations, I couldn't care less. Being what is described in Australian soccer parlance as a ‘bitter’ – that is, someone who displays near abject antipathy to the changes wrought to the game after government reviews and the return to the local soccer scene of billionaire Frank Lowy in 2004, which included the establishment of the franchise based A-League, which excludes clubs such as the one I follow from participating – I was content to just sit back and watch the carnage unfold.

On the following Friday morning though, the day before another potentially volatile fixture – depending on your definition of volatile of course - I received a phone call from a private phone number. It was sports reporter Ben Lisson, of ABC TV news, who said he’d been passed along my details from Dr. Ian Syson, a local soccer academic and my doctoral thesis supervisor. ‘Would I mind having a bit of a chat about the flare situation?’ he asked.

‘Not at all’, I must have said, or words to that effect, as we chatted for a few minutes about the flares and the media reaction to the incident. And so after going over some of the key issues, then came the invitation to speak on camera about these matters. ‘When?’, I asked. ‘Tomorrow’, said Lisson. ‘We’ll also be following a family with children that support Melbourne Victory to see what they think’.

So, with plans made for Lisson and his crew to visit my house in Melbourne’s western suburbs, I was already wondering what I’d got myself into. What did I know about flares? I’d never lit a flare. Apart from proximity to certain former notorious Australian soccer hooligans, I had no hooligan, ultra, or active supporter street cred worth speaking of. And while I am an Australian soccer historian and cultural observer, my main academic specialty is soccer as it appears in Australian literature. What’s more, while I don’t like flares, it’s not necessarily on the grounds of law and order, which seems to be one of the main objections to their use in Australian soccer; no, my dislike for flares is more to do with aesthetics.

Yes, there is the awful smell, and the smoke which stings eyes, nose and throat – and on a windy day, the obscuring of the playing field. But as one friend noted on the matter, they also come across as an attempt at a ‘cheap pop’, to borrow a phrase from professional wrestling. And rather than being a demonstration of a spontaneous emotional release, the premeditated launching of a flare after a goal has been scored comes across as creatively moribund almost from the get-go; rather than losing oneself in the jubilant post-goal moment, the person lighting the flare has taken the time out to perform pre-prepared material; rather than becoming one with the exultant crowd, they set themselves both apart from and outside of it.

Nevertheless, I assumed that that line of inquiry would not be at the top of Lisson’s list of questions. So instead I spent the day wondering about the mechanics of the whole thing. Where in my house would they film? Would I have to do a walking to the camera shot, or better still, pretend to be doing serious academic work on my computer or rifling through the contents of a bookshelf? What should I wear? Who should I tell? How would I be introduced to the world? And as a ‘bitter’ with a moderate online reputation, would whatever I have to say be inevitably consumed along partisan lines?

While still pondering these questions, that evening I found myself with a few hundred other souls at the Kingston Heath Soccer Complex, deep in Melbourne’s middle class south-eastern suburban nightmare, watching my club South Melbourne field no recognisable strikers in a 3-0 Community Shield loss to Bentleigh Greens. The smoke of the lamb gyros billowing across the field from the pavilion – and a short break when the ground’s sprinklers came on - was about as close as such as a game could come to being disrupted.

Despite the wonders of the internet age being able to turn anyone into a self-published viral star, there is still something to be said about being interviewed by the traditional broadcast media. And thus while I had decided to be very low-key about the whole thing, I did relent and tell a smattering of my fellow South fans about my impending interview to be broadcast on state-wide television, perhaps even national television – the common reaction being incredulity and confusion about why I’d be chosen to talk about such an issue. Still, one had to be cautious – the interview could have been cancelled, or I could have been interviewed and the entire segment discarded. Probably best not to get too much into a self-promotional state of mind then.

The next day, as the appointed time for the interview drew closer, I started to run through all the things I’d like to say. That despite claims to the contrary from some Australian soccer fans, there is actually a long-standing culture of lighting flares at Australian soccer matches. That active supporters by and large actually like flares, and can’t come out and claim otherwise when the Facebook accounts of active supporters are littered with photographs of flare shows from both local and overseas soccer matches. That flares are impossible to ban, and that all you can hope to achieve is a sort of containment, which would include the use of social ostracism. That whatever measures you attempt to take, there’ll always be one or two people who will disregard the social norms and do what they please, but the most important thing is that the third, fourth and fifth person don’t join in.

Furthermore, that there is the continuing issue of Australia and soccer having an uneasy relationship with each other, the latter often being tarred with the brush of novelty, foreignness and violence, just three items from a long list of historical criticisms of the sport. That the unsolicited advice regarding soccer’s internal cultural discussions from people with a vested interest in other sports is beyond worthless. That instead of listening to those hostile commentators, Australian soccer needs to acknowledge, understand and address the problem on its own terms and for its own sake, with no regard for the opinions of those who despise the game.

Perhaps I could put forward the idea that Australia still has a problem with multiculturalism, interpreting the word to mean the policy of gentle rather than forced assimilation into an imagined middle, instead of a pluralist model allowing many cultures to exist parallel to each other, with no privileged culture at the centre. That what mainstream Australia sees when they see the kind of active support typical to soccer, is interpreted as both a freak-show and as a vague cultural threat, challenging the notions put forward by other Australian sports that the only way to behave in an Australian sporting crowd is to sit down, shut up, and clap politely; and as an extension of that, active support as it manifests itself in Australia is also perhaps too Continental in style, even too Catholic for a nation with a more than residual Protestant fear of reckless displays of self-expression.

Ten minutes or so after receiving a text message from Lisson telling me he’s on his way, a familiar face from network TV strolled through my front gate, with his cameraman in tow. I was slightly unnerved by the fact that Lisson was wearing shorts and thongs (flip-flops for the international reader), but quickly surmised that since his job is mostly to be filmed from the waist up, that it really didn't matter what he wore below the belt.

While the cameraman went about setting up his equipment, Lisson asked me what I specialised in, and seemed disappointed that my officially designated speciality was in literature; my attempts to add my long-standing interest and credentials in Australian soccer history and culture came across as a lame attempt to prove to him that I was worth having made the journey out to Sunshine West. Having decided to film in my front garden, I was instructed to focus on Lisson and not at the camera.

During the interview, I became aware almost from the start that I was not providing the sought for answers, let alone providing them in the preferred format. Instead of clear, direct and definitive statements, the interview saw me play out all the usual academic tropes – that of the kinds of mumbled complexities which would make sense in a long form discussion, lecture theatre, or published academic paper. I thought that the most erudite thing that I’d said was that there was nothing new to see here, and that the situation as it was playing itself out had only served to repeat the standard tropes of the debate. In its own way a cynical reaction to the affair, but perhaps the most obvious one that too often gets ignored when this issue comes up.

After a few minutes the interview is over, and once the framing shots are done Lisson thanks me for my time, telling me that the segment will be on tomorrow evening. On the evening the segment was due to be played, the two televisions in my household were strategically set to everything but the 7PM ABC News bulletin. My parents, who had rightfully commandeered one of the televisions, were watching probably illegally streamed Greek channels. My brothers and I, on the other television, set about watching the rather mediocre repeat Futurama episode where Bender ends up on an island full of obsolete robots.

At some point during the evening’s syndicated viewing, I received a text message from Pamela, a friend and colleague from university who had seen the segment. There were also a couple of tweets from those who had been implored by others to look out for it, but it seemed that by and large my debut television appearance had gone unnoticed. Mustering my courage the day after the segment went to air, I decided to watch it on the ABC’s online catch up service, enduring the vox pops with the Victory supporting families, waiting for my moment of fame, and finally, there I was: ‘Paul Mavroudis: soccer academic’, complete with ruddy face, blotchy skin, and mumbling something – re-imagined as ‘an aporia in the intercodal discursive relativities’ by one online wit - which seemed to have little connection to the rest of the story.

And that was it - my supposed intellectual expertise and days’ worth of angst reduced to a three-second sound-bite. The truth of course, is that I could have backed out at any time, but chose not to out of the vain sense that I would have something important to say, and something which would be noticed and appreciated by the wider public. In that sense, my actions bore at least some similarity to the person who chooses to light a flare at an Australian soccer match; a chance for self-promotion, and a contribution to an unceasing and largely unchanging discussion about flares and Australian soccer. And thus the discursive tropes around flares and Australian soccer were repeated once more, with me fulfilling my obligation as abstract indirectly involved talking head.

Except for joyful but ignorant attempts at gardening, 2020 was rubbish

In keeping with the blog's low level of productivity in 2020, I was going to produce a very, very short piece thanking a handful of people, and then moving on. 

At best it would have been a box-ticking post, doing one's duty to increasingly vague ideas of the blog's continuities, and then forgetting about it.

But upon further reflection, it is worth making at least brief reference to the pile of crap that was 2020.

I doubt there will be many people who enjoyed this year. From my point of view it was an ordeal. Not an unmanageable ordeal, but an ordeal nonetheless. 

At least in previous years there was not, for me at least, this extended social isolation, partly a result of social distancing, and partly a result of things not related to the pandemic. At least in the past there was something to look forward to, and one of those things for me was attending South Melbourne Hellas matches.

Attending Hellas matches didn't solve any of my personal problems, and I wouldn't expect it to do so. But apart from watching the games live, there was also an entire procedure undertaken in order for me to watch South games. This procedure included the trips (usually by public transport) to and from whatever ground we were playing at; the getting to the ground early to make the most of the evening or afternoon; and of course writing the blog piece after a game, which gave me the chance to try and make sense of what I'd experienced, and to place it within a wider context.

My weekend was scheduled around South games - everything else in terms of leisure time was a bonus, and subject to negotiation with other duties. But apart from the certainty created by routine, the most important thing of all was that going to South games was a social experience. There were people I could speak to, whether briefly or at length. There were people who were glad to see me, and people who weren't. There were handshakes and eye contact. And there was a feeling of a common cause, no matter how absurd that cause is, and how marginal it has become. 

People shared their joys and frustrations together, in social proximity to each other. What the pandemic and the lockdown diminished then, on so many fronts, was that feeling of social proximity. We were all in it together we were told, and that was true to a large extent. But we were also mostly all in it together apart. We became remote from each other. No amount of online work - chats, forums, Zooms, or whatever other technological tools kept us connected - can replace that absence of social proximity. 

This year I continued to co-host a podcast on a weekly basis with my good friend Ian Syson, producing 36 episodes, mostly remotely via Zoom, and it was enjoyable, not least for giving me something to look forward to, a reliable signpost in the desert of social distancing; but what I most looked forward to by the end of the year was getting back into the studio. And it is to the resumption of engaging in the practice of social proximity that I look forward to most of all in 2021. 

I hope the team does well on the field and that it prospers off it, but I especially look forward to reconnecting with my fellow South fans, and maybe even some opposition fans. There were about 20 people at the members forum in the social club last week, and as low as that seems, it was wonderful to be in that room with those people, and to be chatting with them after the meeting had ended. 

I missed watching South play, but mostly I missed being near South people, and I look forward to getting back to Lakeside in 2021, reconnecting with the human side of the sport and the club, and once more making the abstract idea of supporting this club into something more tangible.

Fuck, just getting back into Row H will do me wonders; until we cop that first goal of course, and then I start wondering what I'm doing there.

Now that the verbose emotionality is out of the way, thank you to the following people and organisations in what was South of the Border's 13th year.

Thank you to Football Victoria for media accreditation, even if it only lasted five games.

Thanks to Football Nation Radio for continuing to give me and Ian a radio slot to talk Australian soccer history.

Thanks to everyone who offered their condolences after the death of my father, but especially to Greg Stock, Sam Barres, and Davy Raff for checking in on me regularly at the toughest time.

Thanks to those also who gave me and Gains a lift at some point during those memorable five games of 2020.

Thanks to Gains for being my public transport buddy.

I would like to think that I'll try harder next year.

2021 senior men's and women's fixtures released

Well, here's something to look forward to, maybe. The 2021 senior men's team fixture has been released, and there are a handful of points worth bringing up.

The first thing to note is that the senior men's running order is pretty much the 2020 fixture repurposed for 2021. There are a couple of minor changes in the early stages - our opening round fixture against Heidelberg will be at Olympic Village instead of at Lakeside; and our round six game against Thunder will be a Wednesday night fixture at Lakeside, as part of a league-wide midweek round.

Everything else appears to be about the same, except for the allocation of South senior men's home match days. And if you like Sunday afternoon/early evening soccer at Lakeside, you're out of luck. In 2020 we were due to play just the one Sunday home game - the Eastern Lions game early in the season - this year, there will be no Sunday home games.

The club has committed to exclusively trying out Friday and Saturday nights, with a couple of exceptions - the aforementioned Wednesday night game against Thunder, and a Saturday 3:00PM kickoff against Hume, the latter of which is an accommodation for Orthodox Easter.

The only Sunday games are St Albans away (naturally), Eastern Lions away (unusually), and Bentleigh away (final round simultaneous kickoff). All up for home games, it's one Wednesday night, four Friday nights, one Saturday afternoon, and seven Saturday nights. 

The senior women's fixture has also been released, and the news on that front is that there will be six NPL-NPLW double-headers on those Saturday evening senior men's fixtures. The women will be relieved at not having to trudge out to Knox or Darebin for their home games.

South senior men's squad as of 21/12/2020

Since I put up my first such list for the pre-season on Saturday, I have come into some new information, or rather clarifications, on this matter. And since we've reached a little Christmas/New year break where there will be no more games, it was perhaps worth providing a perfunctory update. 

Named in official South Melbourne FC social media during what might be called the 2020 post-season/2021 pre-season, or noted to me during the members forum yesterday, and thus one might assume that they are on the senior men's roster for 2021:

• Luke Adams (played in pre-season friendly, and interviewed following one of those games)
• Zac Bates (played in pre-season friendly, and interviewed following one of those games))
• Daniel Clark (yes, back from Queensland)
• Pierce Clark ((yes, also back from Queensland)
• Ben Djiba (could yet become the right-sided fullback or winger of our NPL dreams)
• Lirim Elmazi (was wished a happy birthday, distinctive head spotted in other social media content)
• Chris Irwin
• Perry Lambropoulos (was wished a happy birthday)
• Mathew Loutrakis (interviewed post friendly)
• Jake Marshall (played in pre-season friendly
• Brad Norton (scored goal in pre-season friendly)
• Luke Pavlou (some sort of mention in a social media gimmick video or something)
• Harrison Sawyer (yes, also back from Queensland)
• Marcus Schroen (was interviewed in that video about South Melbourne;s new blind football team)
• Gerrie Sylaidos (scored goal in pre-season friendly, also easily recognisable thanks to trademark bandana)

Youth team players named as part of social media guff from a recent friendly played with a "youthful side", and/or, 20s players that might still be around next season:

• Sasha Murphy
• Yianni Panakos
• Esad Saglam
• Giorgi Zarbos (unclear if he will stay or seek greener senior football pastures)

In:

• Marco Jankovic
• Josh Wallen

Neither here nor there as far as I can tell:

• Josh Meaker

Out:

• Melvin Becket
• Josh Dorron
• Stephen Folan (returned to Ireland in mid-2020)
• Amadu Koroma
• Nick Krousoratis
• Nikola Roganovic (retired, again)
• Peter Skapetis (Kingston City)

Notes from today's members forum

As usual, these notes are not the complete picture of what goes on at such meetings, but rather the version which results from my tasteful curation - just in case that wasn't clear to any long term readers. As for the new people - are there still new people?

I didn't really take any notes, except for about four compact notepad lines on my phone. If I missed something important, it was probably while I accidentally spilled about eight Eclipse mints across the table. 

Anyway, slightly smaller attendance than I'd anticipated, but what did I anticipate? It doesn't matter. I think there's still people who are COVID-shy, which is totally understandable, and hey - it's the week before Christmas, which is hardly the big ticket time for attracting people to non-AGM related South gatherings.

And maybe people had better or more important things to do. Having relocated what might be an apricot sapling from a pot to an empty space in my front yard, all my tasks for the day were done; and thus I was free to attend a South event for the first time since April.

Representation from the board on an official front was from president Nick Maikousis, and secretary and treasurer Mario Vinaccia. 

Speaking of the AGM, the club has received a COVID extension from ASIC, and thus the AGM will be held some time in February. One reason given for this is that the auditor needs to visit the club in person to see the books, something which has not been possible thus far because of the pandemic; or something like that. 

We are assured that unlike all the other times, this time it is genuinely all above board. And I believe them, not least because I'm too tired to argue, but also as an extension of goodwill on my part to people working hard under difficult circumstances to make the club better.

There was some discussion on the club's attempts at establishing its business coterie group, which has been hampered by the pandemic. The discussion from the floor seemed focused mostly on finding ways for the pleb South Melbourne member to be able to make use of the networking opportunities the coterie is designed to provide to its clientele.

On the matter of the composition of the senior men's team for next season, I would not expect too many more new faces. The club appears to believe that it has a strong contingent of youth prospects - even if it also appears that the club is not sure if it fluked this cohort, or actually somehow planned for them to become available all at once. 

There was talk, as there has been in previous seasons, that the club is cutting costs on its senior wage bill. If the club uses more youth team players to fill out the senior men's squad, there's every chance that this claim of cutting the senior men's team wage bill might actually be true this time; or at least more true.

Apparently, rather than the wage bills of NPL Victoria senior men's teams taking a hit because of the pandemic, the suggestion seemed to be made that in fact more money was being spent on senior men's teams for the coming NPL season. If that's true, then I wish those players raking it in all the best. Take 'em for every last cent!

On the matter of memberships for next season, as promised the question was thrown open to the floor, with the board to take on - but not necessarily act upon - the advice offered. The main question is of course for 2020 financial members who were if not outright promised that their 2020 membership would rollover to 2021, than at least had that possibility offered as a suggestion earlier this year by Maikousis during one of his pre-recorded briefings to the members. 

Unsurprisingly, the board's starting and/or preferred position seemed to be that 2020 members should pay the regular rate of membership dues. The supporters in attendance tended to veer to the opposite view, but there was also the suggestion made by some supporters that 2020 members could pay a discounted rate of $50, which is analogous to the rate paid by active life members. It will of course be interesting to see what the board settles on, because I don't think they were all that thrilled with the $50 amount. 

At the same time, the pandemic has impacted people in a variety of ways, and of course the club should take that into consideration, not forgetting also that apart from the shortened season, we only got two home games in anyway. One member managed to articulate the question that seemed to have hitherto gone unspoken; that being the question of establishing goodwill from the board's part. I assume we'll find out what the board finally settle on in the new year.

But generating goodwill between the board and ordinary members, however difficult, needs to be a top priority. The relationship between the late Athanasakis-era board and the ordinary supporter got to a frankly poisonous stage. Goodwill takes a lot of time to build up, and mere seconds to destroy.

On to the matter of the National Second Division. There will be a white paper released (I think) next month. The club is of the position that it would prefer a 2022 start, but it seems we could end up with a 2023 start. Some people from the floor were less optimistic than even that. Assuming we get in to the NSD of course! So much yet remains to be made official that it is difficult to talk with any certainty about the future of promotion-relegation and a National Second Division. 

COVID has thrown its own spanner in the works, including creating realignments within the balance of power of Australian soccer, probably weakening almost everyone, but some groups more than others. Using my powers of discretion I won't elaborate too much on the thoughts of Maikousis on the scheme as a whole, except to say: 

• that the goal remains for South to enter such a competition at the earliest opportunity.
• that despite the high degree of interest from clubs around the country in participating in a National Second Division, that the cost of doing so may prove to be more prohibitive than people would like.

The NSD is not a favourite topic of mine, in part because I acknowledge that I am largely incapable of understanding and assessing the merits of what is being proposed as it relates to the scheme's practicality. I recognise my deficiencies in matters of finance, accounting, and logistics, and leave these matters to people who have more information than I do, and hopefully comprehend it to a suitable level.

Ah, there I go apologising for dodging the question again. One observation of mine from a cultural perspective, is that the goal of establishing an NSD along with promotion-relegation to all tiers, is that such a scheme is in a race against the desires of the extant A-League licence holders. Who will get to their promised land first, and will the imminent unbundling of the A-League from Football Australia bring riches or disaster upon the house of A-League?

And my goodness, until this pandemic business gets sorted out, and the top-flight's long-term broadcast deal with it, there's too many variables. But I digress. 

 

While it appears certain that our first game of the 2021 season will be played away at Heidelberg, the club seemed hopeful that it would still manage to get two home games within the first six rounds of the coming season. From what I understand from a sidebar conversation I had during the meeting, the 2021 fixture is more or less settled.

There has been a mutual and apparently amicable termination of the social club catering arrangement with the lease holder. The club is exploring its options on that front.

It appears that the taekwondo folk could end up hiring the futsal court space for some time yet, providing a welcome medium term revenue source to the club.

There were a brief mention of the improved relationship with the Trust, and the soon be signed deal for the pavillion down at Middle Park.

That about covers the main points of the meeting. 

Pre-season rolls along

Another senior men's pre-season friendly today, played behind closed doors at Lakeside. Another youthful South line-up, and another win, 3-2 over Eastern Lions. The appearance of winger Matthew Loutrakis in the post-match interview allows me to move him from the "existential limbo" status to "2021 senior roster" status, as per the edit to the previous post.

2021 SMFC senior men's squad roster as of 19/12/2020

In an attempt at serving my now even tinier audience - which is mostly my fault, because I have just about given up trying to do anything of value on this site - I have attempted to figure out the status of our senior men's squad as we come to the close of the calendar year.

A good chunk of this is wild guesswork on my part because I don't do facial recognition too good, which makes the following list even less useful than would normally be the case. All corrections and updates are thus quite welcome, via the comments section below.

Named in official South Melbourne FC social media during what might be called the 2020 post-season/2021 pre-season, and thus one might assume that they are on the senior men's roster for 2021:

• Luke Adams (played in pre-season friendly, and interviewed following one of those games)
• Zac Bates (played in pre-season friendly, and interviewed following one of those games))
• Lirim Elmazi (was wished a happy birthday, distinctive head spotted in other social media content)
• Perry Lambropoulos (was wished a happy birthday)
• Mathew Loutrakis (interviewed post friendly)
• Jake Marshall (played in pre-season friendly
• Brad Norton (scored goal in pre-season friendly)
• Luke Pavlou (some sort of mention in a social media gimmick video or something)
• Marcus Schroen (was interviewed in that video about South Melbourne;s new blind football team)
• Gerrie Sylaidos (scored goal in pre-season friendly, also easily recognisable thanks to trademark bandana)

Decamped to Queensland once it became clear that there wasn't going to be any more soccer played in Victoria in 2020, and we assume they'll be back but who knows?

• Daniel Clark
• Pierce Clark
• Harrison Sawyer

Maybe they've been shot into the sun, or maybe they're still around, and just maybe they've been in photos but who can be bothered squinting at Facebook on a crappy laptop to make out the differences between one disposable NPL player and another, with no offence meant to anyone who might fall into this category:

• Melvin Becket
• Ben Djiba
• Josh Dorron
• Chris Irwin
• Amadu Koroma
• Nick Krousoratis
• Josh Meaker
• Esad Saglam
• Giorgi Zarbos

Youth team players named as part of social media guff from a recent friendly played with a "youthful side":

• Sasha Murphy

In:

• Marco Jancovic
• Josh Wallen

Out:

• Stephen Folan (returned to Ireland in mid-2020)
• Nikola Roganovic (retired, again)
• Peter Skapetis (Kingston City)

Friendly vs Dandenong Thunder tonight

Open doors, 7PM at George Andrews Reserve in South Dandenong.

I won't be there, but maybe some of you will be interested in reclaiming the sooth-eastern suburbs for South Melbourne Hellas.

Members forum on Sunday

Sunday at 11:00 at Lakeside, "under strict Covid Guidelines", with admittance only for people who were paid up members in 2020. Items to be discussed include National Second Division, membership arrangements for next year, and "all things relating to our club for season 2021". 

So is this the AGM you have when you're not having an AGM? It does seem like it a little bit. Does this also mean that when the AGM eventually does roll around, that it will be an in person affair? You'd like to think so.

What seems fairly clear is that there is an ongoing attempt being made to separate discussions on general club matters - the team, the supporter experience, and sundry matters that fall into what might be called "current affairs", from the non-negotiable elements of an AGM, such as the financial performance of the club.

Which to be fair, is not an altogether bad idea, as long it means that alongside holding AGMs that are both efficient and informative, that the club otherwise continues to hold more informal gatherings like this one in order to keep members abreast of other matters.

That's not something the club has been good at, but at least president Nick Maikousis seems to be holding firm to his goal of keeping in touch with member concerns outside a mandatory annual meeting.

Infer from this what you will

So last night while I was having a so-so dinner at some Vietnamese joint in Footscray, a "youthful" South senior men's team had another closed doors training match, this time against Hume City. Gerrie Sylaidos scored the only goal in a 1-0 "win".

It begins!

While we await news of memberships (hopefully this year) and the AGM (goodness knows when), the senior men's team has stepped up from mere jogging to starting their scratch match series; to wit, a 2-0 "win" against Manningham United last Saturday(?) at Lakeside. 

This is the bit where one would normally complain about not getting an invite to watch said practice match, which would lead to grumbling about the logical and yet still absurd situation where the Trust considers our activities at Lakeside as either practice or matches, but not both at once, and thus we choose the former to keep costs down, especially during our non-priority use period.

But COVID19| Coronavirus! Pandemic! And thus one does not grumble, but merely acquiesces to the peculiarities of the situation we find ourselevs in, and tries to glean what one can from the social media crumbs given to us - which in this case is not getting perturbed that the two goals we scored were by the two players who scored our most recent goals during the season, ahem, "proper".

Also, whatever other qualities Jake Marshall has, speaking to camera - or even managing to stay within the camera shot - is not one of them. Though it doesn't help when your teammates are piffing objects at you during your interview.

So that's the first hit-out out of the way, as everyone tries to return to something approaching normal. Speaking of which, I'm hearing - but which I mean I read on a forum - that the 2021 season is likely to begin in late February, with an away trip to the remodelled Olympic Village. After scoring two home games to start the 2020 season, could we be in line to be away from Lakeside for months on end to start next year?

Don't press that button just yet

Like at least some of you, yesterday I received an email from the club noting that my membership had expired, and that it was time to renew for 2021. That's pretty standard fare under normal circumstances, but this not being a standard year, one does not immediately go hitting the renew button.

This is especially the case as the idea was floated a few months ago that the club might consider rolling over paid 2020 memberships into 2021, though I'm not sure that was an idea that was ever declared a certainty.

I am of the understanding that the club is still looking into the matter, and hopefully we will have an update soon. Considering the club's social media wing has sparked into life with regular news about senior men's pre-season and the exploits of our loaned players up north, it would be unwise to ignore the membership question for too long.

As for me, I'm happy to write-off my 2020 membership as a donation to the club and pay my dues again for 2021, though I understand that's not for everyone.

News from northern climes for southern slackers

Every now and again one sees little items about some of our players currently occupied with soccer matters in Queensland: Pierce Clark made some saves; Daniel Clark scored a goal of some sort in a game that was maybe important; Harrison Sawyer scored a ton of goals against what looked like on video to be a very flatfooted defence, but turned out to belong to the team sitting second on the ladder at the time.

If I were being paid to keep track of this stuff I'd have put in more effort - not just in terms of taking an interest in the form and status of our players currently in northern climes - but also maybe trying to figure out how Queensland soccer actually works, and in which league which players of ours are playing in. It'd be so much easier if they were playing in Tasmania.

Anyway, I think the top flight Queensland (that is NPLQ and BPL - is there still a BPL?) season(s) are over, which means that soon enough our on loan personnel will be returned to us, so they can go jogging on the grassy bit in the middle of Lakeside Stadium, and running on the sand of South Melbourne beach.

But then again... one does these routine searches for news in one's half-arsed way, and see that Harrrison Sawyer was selected for a Brisbane Roar pre-season friendly. That Roar outfit beat their opponents (according to one source, some sort of youth team) 7-1, with Sawyer not getting any of those goals. Nor was there any indication of how much game time Sawyer got to see.

So, I guess he'll be back in Melbourne soon?

Well, it was more or less inevitable, when you think about it

Almost four years ago now, in a semi-mock confused and somewhat curmudgeonly way, I wrote a piece about the unveiling of a statue of Ferenc Puskas out the back of Gosch's Paddock.

At the time I noted that the entire concept of the statue - its provenance, its reasoning, its design, its location - was so out of sync with what Puskas meant to Melbourne, that the only vaguely meaningful part of the enterprise was the fact that they placed the statue in the obscurity of the bushes beside a goat track. 

Since then, the Budapest bid for the 2024 Olympic Games - for which reason the statue was commissioned and given as a "gift" to Victoria from the government of Hungary - was withdrawn well before the voting for 2024 got to its final stage.

Considering the Victorian government didn't even want the statue, the supposed "avenue of champions" that was to see more statues commissioned and placed within the vicinity of the Puskas piece, has not yet materialised. To which I say "I am shocked, shocked! Well, not that shocked", as the kids like to meme.

Meanwhile, the statue itself has not fared well, as seen in this tweet by SM Pete

With no plaque, standing mostly unnoticed beside a rugby training venue, the statue of Ferenc Puskas should surely be moved to Lakeside Stadium. pic.twitter.com/VjqwHQQ8wP

— SM Pete (@SMEMUFC) November 24, 2020

which shows not only the statue looking quite the worse for wear, but also that the plaque that was on the plinth has gone missing. One assumes that it was stolen by someone, for who knows what reason. Considering the out-of-the-way location of the statue, and the restrictions on movement around the city due to the pandemic, who knows for sure when the plaque even vanished?

At any rate, the unseemly state of Puskas' statue has fired up parts of our supporter base, who are petitioning members of the state government to relocate the statue to Lakeside. I wish those activists well in their quest for statue justice, though it might help their cause a little if they knew about how the statue came about - and that for once it was not a failure of the Club that saw things turn out the way they have. 

Yes, there is a first time for everything. And I also forgive those people for not reading about the story of the statue on the one place that reported on it.

It's been my understanding for some time now that there has been provision made for a South Melbourne Hellas statue to take up a spot outside Lakeside Stadium, opposite the statue of South Melbourne Swans champion Bob Skilton, assuming we could find someone to stump up the cash to craft such a thing. 

Since that's unlikely to happen anytime soon, there are worse solutions to this sorry saga than to move the Puskas statue to the spot which has been allotted for a possible future Hellas statue.

Peter Skapetis joins Kingston City

Well, considering the career trajectory of Peter Skapetis, his South tenure seems to have come to a suitably anti-climactic end. So it goes.

Usually at this part of the year I like to keep tabs on who is signed with South, who's come in, and who's head out the door, but frankly who knows how to make sense of this year's goings on.

That, and maybe I just can't arsed.

Just a few things to keep the blog ticking over.

The hard lockdown is over, the sun shines occasionally, and Paul thinks it might be worth continuing to blog - even though blogging was already passe when he started, and he's now engrossed in another passe pastime, podcasting.

This year being just awful, what was there to say even if one was half-motivated - which one was most certainly not. Not much news of new signings or looking to the future, but the club has been making announcements about junior coaching appointments and such, which I am sure will work out just fine.

Still, the fact that this stuff is happening at all seems to suggest that the club believes that the year 2020 will eventually come to an end, and that there will be a 2021 (hard to believe, but I suppose anything could happen), and that football will be played in this hypothetical "new year", and thus preparations should be made for that eventuality.

He's aged terribly / but haven't we all

So the club put up a Facebook video with an update from (a weary looking and sounding) club president Nick Maikousis. Some chat about the national second division. Nothing particularly new here - reiteration that the club has always sought to play at the highest level possible, and chat about working on the model. But ah, the promise that any South Melbourne Hellas club in a hypothetical higher competition will be a community based and member based entity. Also some stuff about the South Melbourne Business Community initiative. 

The holding of the AGM will be problematic because of COVID restrictions,  but the club is working through that.

Notable persons

Former South Melbourne Hellas president, the late Sam Papasavas, has made it into the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The article is a well-rounded summary of Papasavas' versatility of public service, especially within the migrant and soccer spheres. As good as the article is, it's already been noted that the detail on Papasavas' tenure as National Soccer League chairman is in error - but I'm sure someone out there will take the necessary steps soon enough to correct

That's some language you got there. And you talk like that 24/7, huh?

So there's some kind of Brazilian A-League podcast or something on YouTube, and they had beloved post-NSL South Melbourne Hellas hero Fernando de Moraes on as their guest. I assume the entire hour and forty-five minutes is in Portuguese, and my Portuguese isn't crash-hot.

Ay, caramba, que mujer tonta! Veinte horas estudiar por nada!

Slightly easier to get a handle on is this Spanish language interview with our senior men's team coach Esteban Quintas, if only because there are ways to dump the whole site into translating tools to get the gist of what's going on. And what is going on? Well, there's a bit about Quintas' playing career and his transition from playing to coaching, and some stuff about his playing philosophy. 

Thinking back to when I read the article a week or two back, and trying to claw back memories of what was said, I'm less concerned about Quintas' methods - which seem convoluted to me, but hey, I'm no football professor, so what would I know - and more concerned with his assessment that Australian players are strong (yes), fast (yes), physical (yes), but don't necessarily lack in technique (what?). Quintas says (more or less) that Australian players lack for tactical knowledge and situational awareness (undeniably true).

While I have my doubts on Quintas' assessment of Australian players' technical prowess, what's more important here is that his assessment of Australian soccer's strengths and weaknesses - and that on field organisation and decision making is our major flaw - is what informs the way he coaches. Thus if you are the kind of person who has a higher interest in matters of a tactical nature, it might be worth the effort to get a translation of the interview to try and understand what it is that Quintas had been trying to get out team to do.

As for me, I think I'll stick with yelling out variations of "clear it", "up the line", and "box him in".

Community support

Here's an interesting story, on how South Melbourne is trying to make it easier for young footballers of African heritage to play in the NPL system. What's just as important is that it seems it's not just a South Melbourne initiative, but one that ties int broader efforts led by the Greek community, looking at mentoring African diasporic communities in establishing the community infrastructure that the Australian Greek community has created for itself over he past few decades.

Scene missing

Finally, we started out with the current president, and we finish up with a former one - and some of his mates for good measure. In a Soccer Scene article, writer Peter Papoulias, interviews George Vasilopoulos, Peter Filopoulos, and Peter Abraam in a piece nominally about the off-field talent and innovation fostered by clubs like (and in this case, specifically) South Melbourne Hellas; talent which has gone on to higher degrees of responsibility both within Australian and in other fields.

There's no denying that - much of both the on field and off field talent which was at South Melbourne during the 1990s (the focus of this article) has ended up holding down important roles across the Australian soccer industry - in media, coaching, administration at state and national level, and even at A-League levels as owners, sponsors, or board  an administrative positions.

But the most perplexing part of the article is the literal missing scene; like here is this innovative and successful club, which goes to Brazil and then without any real explanation, ends up where it is now. Like, how did the hell that happen? And before some people yell out "racism, Frank Lowy, and A-League" related conspiracies, my thoughts are more on what did the people leading the club through the 1990s and (immediately thereafter) do which contributed to the club being in a position where it could not even contemplate pursuing an A-League licence?

Ah, but this is retreading very old ground, and the world has moved on. Still, I'm intrigued by that bit which says that the club itself engaged with the producers of Acropolis Now to get more South content and branding on the show.

Nikola Roganovic retires, again

It was on the club's socials, you all saw it, so this is just another blog place-marker / kicking the pandemic can down the road thing.

As noted in the post's title, this is not the first time that Roganovic has retired, but you feel that this time it's really for real. Thanks again for the memories, and the big saves, and the genuine passion he seemed to have for the club.

But now to the future. Assuming that local soccer resumes next season, and that Pierce Clark is definitely the first choice keeper, it will be mildly interesting to see what the club does in terms of a backup option.

Because with all due respect to the children, our youth team options are inadequate in this regard. Sad, but true. That could mean the club recalls Josh Dorron from his state league "loan", putting aside for a moment whether Dorron is up to this grade.

But would any senior grade Victorian keeper who missed an entire season due to the pandemic be willing to play as a backup? Keepers are the least likely players to be substituted on, and as much as getting a paycheck to sit on the bench for 26/30 odd games a year has its own sort of appeal - but people do want to play as well.

It's not a lot to think about, but it's something.

Ange Postecoglou training kit jersey

There's a social media account that's been posting their collection of South Melbourne Hellas jerseys o social media - notably on Twitter (here) and on Facebook groups like Australian Football Memorabilia.

(Just as an aside, and I know I've mentioned this on one of the episodes of the history podcast, but whoever decided to change the name of the game in Australia from "soccer" to "football" has made the work of Australian soccer historians and researchers infinitely more difficult).

Most of the jersey uploader's jerseys seem to be of a comparatively recent vintage - think mid-1990s onwards - and that'd be no surprise, as they're by far the easiest ones to get. I mean, good luck prising a Marathon Foods era jersey out of someone's cold, dead hands. 

And as for a Montague Smash Repairs jersey (supposedly the thinking man's South Melbourne Hellas top) or anything before that, forget about it. That stuff is gone, and probably the only people who have those things have them locked in a vault, or have no clue of their value or importance of such an item, even as it's right in front of their face as I'm saying this, waggling back and forth, perhaps being help up by a loved one.

Nevertheless there are some rare gems in our collector friend's collection, such as this training kit, and this General Diagnostic Laboratories kit before the company's botched pap smear tests saw the firm re-brand as GDL, and the kits changed accordingly. At any rate, the whole affair has prompted me to dig out this photo of what I assume is Ange Postecoglou's training kit jersey from the late 1990s, which I found when I was cleaning out the old social club many, many years ago now. Strange what survives and what doesn't.

Daniel Clark spotted in Queensland

Got informed of this last week, so forgiveness for the late post. South midfielder Daniel Clark has popped up in Queensland, plying his trade for NPLQ side Peninsula Power for the rest of the year. 

South of the Border awards 2020

Earlier this week I put away my heavy winter coat, after having taken out my 2020 media pass from the inside pocket, because at some point everyone - even disinterested bloggers - has just got to admit defeat on there being any more soccer being played this year.

Which, to be fair, I think I'd already done long ago, but it seems like we're getting close to Football Victoria releasing its fee refund policy, if they haven't already - which means that South Melbourne will be one step closer to finalising its own refund policy.

That of course doesn't affect me in any way - I'm no player, nor do I have any children playing. And as for a membership refund? I think I got my $200 worth of miserableness this year, even if we only got two home games. But now to my annual awards, not that anyone deserves anything for this season.

Player of the year: Lirim Elmazi. The easy way out would have been to go for Melvin Becket, but that would have been giving in to the biased social media campaign.

Under 21 player of the year: The Cliff Hussey Memorial Trophy goes to Matthew Loutrakis.

Goal of the year: Brad Norton. From a short corner, with a cross by Melvin Becket. The last thing we did during the 2020 season. The last thing I can actually remember.

Best performance: Eastern Lions at home. Because we won.

Best away game: Oakleigh away. Every away game sucked, but they were our toughest opponents, and we didn't lose, so let's go with that.

Call of the year: Something said by someone about the noted South Melbourne identity "Greeksta", about him having never read a book in his life or some such. Which was a terrible lie, because Greeksta was able to expound at some length on my cameo appearance and other matters in Joe Gorman's The Death and Life of Australian Soccer.  

Chant of the year: I honestly can't remember anything worthwhile on this front.

Best pre-match/after match dinner location: Gains will have to remind me if we went to Thai deli before the Port game, because the experiences of the Indonesian joint (Oakleigh) and the hole in the wall Burmese place in Sunshine (Altona game) were underwhelming in their own way. I regret not getting an ice cream on the way back to Sunshine station now.

Friends we lost along the way: Not so much lost as misplaced, but thanks to COVID19, pretty much everybody. Yes you can see and interact with a good deal with the usual suspects on the old socials, but it's just not the same. 

Barely related to anything stupidity highlight of the year: The one silver lining in this dumpster fire of a year is that it didn't last long enough for us to get dragged into a relegation battle.